The disclosures of all publications referenced herein are incorporated by reference in their entirety for all purposes.
Advantages of the present disclosure will be more readily understood after considering the drawings and the Detailed Description. The drawings illustrate embodiments and schematic concepts for a shredder according to the invention. The purpose of these drawing is to aid in explaining the principles of the invention. Thus, the drawings should not be considered as limiting the scope of the invention to the embodiments and schematic concepts shown therein. Other embodiments of a shredder may be created which follow the principles of the invention as taught herein, and these other embodiments are intended to be included within the scope of patent protection.
While embodiments of a shredder have been particularly shown and described, many variations may be made therein. This disclosure may include one or more independent or interdependent embodiments directed to various combinations of features, functions, elements and/or properties. Other combinations and sub-combinations of features, functions, elements and/or properties may be claimed later in a related application. Such variations, whether they are directed to different combinations or directed to the same combinations, whether different, broader, narrower or equal in scope, are also regarded as included within the subject matter of the present disclosure. Accordingly, the foregoing embodiments are illustrative, and no single feature or element, or combination thereof, is essential to all possible combinations that may be claimed in this or a later application.
It is believed that the disclosure set forth herein encompasses multiple distinct inventions with independent utility. While each of these inventions has been disclosed in its preferred form, the specific embodiments thereof as disclosed and illustrated herein are not to be considered in a limiting sense as numerous variations are possible. Each example defines an embodiment disclosed in the foregoing disclosure, but any one example does not necessarily encompass all features or combinations that may be eventually claimed. Where the description recites “a” or “a first” element or the equivalent thereof, such description includes one or more such elements, neither requiring nor excluding two or more such elements. Further, ordinal indicators, such as first, second or third, for identified elements are used to distinguish between the elements, and do not indicate a required or limited number of such elements, and do not indicate a particular position or order of such elements unless otherwise specifically stated.
I. Field of Application
The invention relates to a shredder/document shredder for sheet-shaped material, such as paper and material of the like or similar data storage media, according to the precharacterizing clause of Claim 1.
II. Technical Background
DE 10 2007 020 222 A1 has disclosed a shredder which has a cylindrical roller which protrudes into the receiving slot for the material to be shredded. The roller is mounted rotatably on a pivotable fork and a spring acts on the fork in such a way that the roller assumes a defined position in the receiving slot. If too much material to be shredded is then fed to the receiving slot, the roller and therefore also the fork are displaced away from the slot region. During this movement, a switch is actuated which then stops the electric motor for the cutting unit. The cylindrical roller and the opposite side of the receiving slot act here to a certain extent as thickness sensor, in order to prevent overloading of the cutting unit and/or the electric motor.
Document US 2006/0219827 A1 describes thickness sensors which can be moved in a translational or else rotational manner and protrude into the receiving slot. It is once again also the case here, as in the abovementioned prior art, that the gap in the receiving slot changes depending on the quantity of the material to be shredded, for example paper.
It is also the case in document US 2010/0320299 A1 that a thickness sensor acts which is of cylindrical configuration and protrudes with part of its circumferential face into the receiving slot of a shredder. Said cylinder is mounted eccentrically and is held in its rest position by means of a tension spring. If too much paper is then introduced there into the receiving slot, friction occurs between the paper and the cylinder, as a result of which said cylinder pivots into the receiving slot (to a certain extent forms a wedge) and the paper feed is blocked as a result.
A common feature of the document shredders according to the prior art is that the receiving slot has a variable width in the region of the thickness sensor. In one case, an additional pivoting mechanism is required, in order to guide a roller of the thickness sensor out of the receiving slot, whereas, in the other case, the slot is narrowed further if too much paper is in the receiving slot. Great forces occur here between the thickness sensor and the cutting unit because the cutting unit still continues to pull on the paper on account of its stopping time, while said paper is already blocked at the thickness sensor.